Study: Most College Students Lack Skills

[Keith Hamburger]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060120/...llege_students

Nearing a diploma, most college students cannot handle many complex but common tasks, from understanding credit card offers to comparing the cost per ounce of food. More than 50 percent of students at four-year schools and more than 75 percent at two-year colleges lacked the skills to perform complex literacy tasks. That means they could not interpret a table about exercise and blood pressure, understand the arguments of newspaper editorials, compare credit card offers with different interest rates and annual fees or summarize results of a survey about parental involvement in school. The results cut across three types of literacy: analyzing news stories and other prose, understanding documents and having math skills needed for checkbooks or restaurant tips. Almost 20 percent of students pursuing four-year degrees had only basic quantitative skills. For example, the students could not estimate if their car had enough gas to get to the service station. About 30 percent of two-year students had only basic math skills.

Our education system is the best in the world!!!

Keith

[Jack]

Every generation gets to dislike the generation following them. It's sort of a right of accedence.

Our parents thought we were losing our minds.

My generation, which still valued education even if we did spend half our time in class stoned, thinks today's kids are dumb, not always without evidence.

They need to watch out for those 8 year old computer geniuses.

[Milton Bradley]

Quote by: Isherwood Every generation gets to dislike the generation following them. It's sort of a right of accedence. Our parents thought we were losing our minds. My generation, which still valued education even if we did spend half our time in class stoned, thinks today's kids are dumb, not always without evidence.

The question is, is it intentional?


If so, it seems prime way to lower expectations so that when nothing works, it is right at the level of expectation.


The perfect example being my parents "expecting" everything to fall apart as soon as my generation gained control.

[Jack]

Not in my case at least. I always dreaded ever developing that attitude, and yet I seem to be thinking that way more every day. It does seem consistant, one generation to the next. Maybe it's because no generation totally fulfills the hopes the previous generation had in them.

[Morgan_Freeman]

I've heard today's youth described as "high performing & high maintenance".
I think that hits the nail on the head. Kids these days don't need to know how to shop. Their parents do it for them. Call it a division of labor.

[RickSp]

Having two kids, one 9 and one 13, I am reasonably confident that my kids and their friends at school are more than capable of handling the tasks described in the survey.

Then again I do remember how diffierent I found grad school than my friends who had just graduated from college. They found the program to be very stressful whereas I found it relatively low key. I had worked for a decade before going back to school. Compared to that grad school was easy. All my crises were scheduled. Problems didn't dive at me out of the sun the way they seemed to in the "real world." Which is a long winded way of saying that many of the faults cited in the survey may be self correcting once the stuents get a taste of working for a living.

[lsbskins1]

Everything in our education system is task oriented. It values nothing more than being able to pick between pre-selected options. Is A, B, or C correct? It is much easier to compare kids in California to kids in Virginia when you do it that way. If your school gets funding based on how well your kids do on standardized tests, teachers teach to those tests. Essay questions are much less quantifiable, but much better suited to fostering independant, critical thought. Is it a giant government/power elite conspiracy to dumb down the electorate? I don't know if I am prepared to be that paranoid. Is it a very real problem? You bet your ass.

[Osborn F Enready]

This comes as NO suprise to me.

For years I have been working for college educated MORONS, who have no common sense.

One time in the Limo, when I was driving Limo for a living, I had a three hour conversation with a CEO of a local firm as I drove him from Toledo to down near Columbus, and the whole time we had actual "stimulating" conversation, centered on politics, economics and basic business goals. When I was nearing his destination, he asked me what College I graduated from, I told him I never had any college courses, to which he promptly said I seemed smarter and more in touch with reality than most of the executives he had filling the desks under him.

I told him once I realized most politicians are college educated, I decided maybe college wasn't for me, since they can't seem to find their ass to pull their head out.

There are kids who want to learn, and can benefit from college, I just think most of them that can "afford" to go, don't use it, and those who can't afford it actually value what they could learn.
There are exceptions both ways, but it seems to play to the idea that if it is easy, you wont value what is at your disposal NEARLY as much as if it is a challenge.

What pisses me off the most, is when companies BASE employment, especially entry level employment on a college degree. Entry level employment, should never be based on a college degree.

[Apeman81]

Our education system is what the attendee makes of it. You can slide by, slacking off, “paying the tuition and earning the position.” Or you can work hard, take difficult and stimulating courses, and gain the knowledge and the ability to learn and think that is necessary to achieve your own path.

This does not denigrate the education system as much as it does the students.

Not to say that the education system hasn’t allowed itself, through greed and desire to indoctrinate, to become a profit based business rather than an institution of higher learning. Slipshod, politically motivated, opinion based, specialized studies with little to no oversight and nonexistent content evaluation do nothing to advance the critical thinking that should be imparted to college age students.

“Pay the fee, get a B” spoon fed community college classes with enough grade school level extra credit assignments to allow passage of the class despite failing every test do nothing to prepare our children for life.

The list goes on.

But whose fault is that? The parent’s for “paying for the paper” so there kid doesn’t have to flip burgers? The Kids for slacking? We, the people for allowing it to occur?

And yet, every year, thousands of students graduate, having achieved a real education by the sweat of their brow and the urging of their parents. Hmmm.

[tman_ndsu08]

I find this news very exciting.

When I graduate, I will be more or less guaranteed to get hired over 50% of my fellow graduates.

[Keith Hamburger]

Quote by: tman_ndsu08 I find this news very exciting. When I graduate, I will be more or less guaranteed to get hired over 50% of my fellow graduates.

I personally wouldn't bet on that. After being out of college for nearly 20 years I have found that the biggest thing to do to get ahead or get hired is to be a "yes man" and go along with whatever the boss thinks. If you question the wisdom of anything, or even point out there may be unintended consequences of a decision, you are "being negative".

One story I use is the old half-full/half-empty glass. You know, the optimist and the pessimist. I say that the realist wonders "why are you using such a large glass if you're not going to fill it to the top?" To which the manager responds "why are you so negative about the glass?"

I'm all about using the right sized glass. Which is why, with a college degree and 18 years of experience in the field I'm now working, I'm making $14/hour with no benefits.

Keith

[bishop]

high school doesn't teach any real critical thinking skills - they teach you the bits you need to know in order to take standardized tests. colleges are increasingly looking past these standardized tests, because they understand that they don't really prove anything. in most cases, though, if you score really high on your tests, it does show a superior intellect - but for the majority who score "average" scores, it doesn't really distinguish one person from another.

there are 2 types of students in college - those paying to get a piece of paper and those paying to get an education.. it's a difference revolving around intellectual curiosity - some have it, most don't.. i wouldn't expect any sort of school to teach people how to understand credit card offers or the other bits mentioned in the article. i would expect people to inform themselves about it.

i know that during my undergrad and graduate programs, i've had several professors stress the importance of continuously informing yourselves about anything and everything. the mind is a muscle and its usefulness extends beyond developing skills to land a good paying job.


i seem to have had good luck compared to some people in this thread.. college definitely helped hone my thinking skills - and it also translated into better economic opportunities (eg. jobs).. i've never been a "yes man" and have never been punished for it. instead, i've been relied on to give honest and forthright analysis/opinion in all the jobs i've had. i've come to learn that when things don't make sense, that there are political factors that DO matter - and these need to be taken into account. it all comes down to negotiation (and communication) skills and being able to find workable solutions that everyone can live with - solutions that also handle the political factors.

and, personal attitude definitely does matter. if you're seen as a negative hothead who is better at getting angry than solving problems, then that stigma will stick to you like glue.

Quote by: rick Then again I do remember how diffierent I found grad school than my friends who had just graduated from college.

my experience was the exact opposite. i waited about 3 years before going back for my master's.. in my case, though, i received my bachelor's in political science but had been working as a business/quality assurance analyst in financial systems... my college education only had tangential relevance to my job. then when i went for my master's, i went for finance which is a highly technical program. going from a liberal art to constructing portfolios for pension funds (weekend homework in bonds class) is night and day.. i nearly lost my mind during my first semester when i was going there (brandeis univ.) full time. i had to switch to a part-time program and got myself a full-time job. that made a world of difference. i was able to take my time learning all these new, difficult, subjects.

[voyager]

I agree that most college students lack basic skills. On any given day I can run into someone who is puzzles about some simple problem. In trying to explain it to them I find that that they are totally lost and can't follow what I am explaining.

This is part of the dumbing down of the American public. How else would you construe a "No Child Left Behind" but with out funding for that program. It is time to realize that in this country we do not want critical thinking citizenry.